Got Cold? GM's got plenty at its Northern Ontario test facility

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How cold is minus 45 degrees Celsius? Cold enough that your engine might not start. Cold enough that your windows might not go down, or an engine gasket might leak.

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To reduce the possibilities, all automakers test in extreme conditions. For General Motors, much of this happens at its proving grounds in Kapuskasing, Ontario, some 850 kilometres north of Toronto.

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Got Cold? GM's got plenty at its Northern Ontario test facility Back to video

While -45C is unlikely outside, ambient temperatures are still plenty cold and there’s lots of snow, and for the toughest tests, there are thirty “cold cells” to take cars to that frostiest degree.

“Our customers might drive through cold weather or snowy conditions, and that’s exactly what we do with these vehicles,” said Connor Sutton, who leads the engineering test team. “Earlier today, we had 500-horsepower cars in half a foot of snow. We hold them to those same standards.”

GM started its Kapuskasing cold-weather testing in 1941, evaluating military vehicles for the government. This permanent centre opened in 1973. About 95 per cent of all GM vehicles sold in North America are tested here; others go to a climatic wind tunnel located much farther south in Oshawa, Ontario.

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The facility covers 110 hectares (272 acres) and includes a 3.6-kilometre test track with a “smart” camera system that follows the cars; a 13-car garage; battery lab; and two cold-weather test lines. Some test-drives are done on public roads as well. The number of people on-site depends on how many vehicles are scheduled, but it’s at least 30 people, and includes engineers, drivers, janitorial staff, traffic safety, and equipment operators who clear snow and groom the track.

“The majority of employees here are local,” said operations leader Matthew Adams, who arrived for his first season last November from his home near Toronto. “If we have 30 vehicles, we’ll have around 20 drivers to drive them.”

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The facility only does winter testing. Once summer arrives, the centre gets any necessary maintenance or updates, while the engineers study new or emerging technologies they’ll be testing, and Adams schedules the vehicles that will be arriving for the next round.

Testing typically runs 12 weeks per winter, and during that time, the facility runs 24/7. The number of vehicles will vary, depending on what’s in development, and as many as 70 need to be evaluated per season. There are two driver shifts – partly because tests have to simulate everyday driving, and people drive at night – and because “we’re working with limited amounts of time, and you need to squeeze every ounce of testing out of the winter seasons,” Sutton said. “We don’t want to miss any potential issues, and some of our coldest temperatures are overnight.”

Vehicles arrive in various stages of development, from early hand-built models, to almost-production. Their individual components have already been extensively tested. Now they’re evaluated as the whole vehicle, known as durability testing. “What we tend to find are issues that stayed under the radar in early testing,” Connor said.

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Durability testing differs from some of the vehicles’ earlier tests. During development, vehicle designs are run through computer simulations to determine how they’ll behave in a crash. When the finished car’s actually rammed into a wall, it’s mostly to validate the virtual data. It’s very rare for anything to happen that wasn’t anticipated.

At Kapuskasing, it’s the opposite: the teams are looking for the unexpected. They open and close doors and hatches; they operate cold switches and screens; and they evaluate wipers and lights. Powertrain issues are the most common as the temperature drops, and all components are thoroughly examined.

While most of the vehicles are still in development, the teams will occasionally test one already on sale, if a recurring issue has been found through customer complaints or warranty repairs. The facility isn’t used for tire testing, and with many early-stage vehicles, their tires are concurrently being developed by the tire manufacturer; but if a vehicle’s equipped with the tires it’ll wear when it goes on sale, the overall evaluations take them into account.

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Electric vehicles (EVs) get tested here, too. At first, the standard test methods had to be altered because the cars didn’t have enough power to last through them, but range has improved enough that the tests are now similar. “A lot of it is relatively long driving periods, and we’re capable of doing that with EVs now,” Sutton said, “although it will potentially involve charging when they come back from a test.”

But the team still has to evaluate how cold weather will shorten an EV’s range, especially when the cabin and seat heaters are on. In the battery lab, engineers also look at how well the battery maintains its optimum temperature in extreme cold.

When any problem is found, the Kapuskasing team connects globally with the engineers responsible for the component. “It’s a loop where we find the issue, talk to the engineers who are involved, and help them get to the root cause of why it’s happening, or solutions that could fix it,” Sutton said. “Then we’ll retrofit the vehicle with updated components or calibrations, and schedule tests to re-evaluate. Sometimes it isn’t something wrong, but our driving staff thinks it should operate differently, like they can’t work a switch with gloves. It’s fulfilling when you find an issue, and you’re glad the guys found it and it never reached our dealers.”